Henry Ossawa Tanner

Henry Ossawa Tanner ( June 21, 1859 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, † May 25, 1937 in Paris, France) was an African American artist who studied with Thomas Eakins and was the first African American painter achieved international recognition.

Life and career

Tanner was the son of Benjamin Tucker, a minister of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Sarah Miller Tanner, a teacher. Tanner was the eldest of nine children. 1864 the family moved to Philadelphia Tanner, where developed his artistic interests. At the age of 13 years, Tanner decided to become artists, when he saw a painter at the Fairmont Park near his home. Originally a self-taught artist began Tanner constant in his spare time to draw and tried to observe the works of other artists in galleries in Philadelphia. In 1879 he took up his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and studied until 1885 under Thomas Eakins.

1886 Tanner taught his own studio in Philadelphia one. After moving to Atlanta and the failed attempt to operate a photography studio, Tanner taught at Clark University. In 1891 he traveled to France, where he studied under Jean -Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian and the American Art Students Club of Paris joined.

During a brief stay in Philadelphia painted Tanner The Banjo Lesson 1893, a high point in its initial period of genre paintings by African Americans. In 1895 he returned to Paris to escape racial discrimination in America. In Paris, Tanner turned to his religious background and painted increasingly biblical subjects, like Daniel, with whom he won an honorable mention at the Paris Salon in 1896 in the lions' den.

In World War Tanner worked for the Public Information Department of the American Red Cross and painted at this time also pictures from the front lines of the war.

Several of Tanner's paintings bought by the Atlanteans art collector JJ Haverty, founder of Haverty Furniture Co., contributed decisively to the establishment of the High Museum of Art. Tanners Etaples Fisher Folk is one of several paintings from the Haverty collection, which are now in the permanent collection of the High Museum.

Style of painting

Tanner is often classified as a realist painter who pays attention to the accurate reproduction of his subjects. While his early works, such as The Banjo Lesson, to deal with the everyday lives of African Americans, have his later works for which he is best known today, mainly religious subjects. It is likely that Tanner's father had a formative influence in this direction.